Science & Tech

Science & Tech

Explore the discoveries that reveal how the world works, alongside the technologies that extend, reshape, and sometimes challenge what’s possible.

People in early 20th-century attire gather outside a building, as an intriguing green geometric pattern overlays the scene. This blend of classic and modern elements evokes the innovative spirit of AI art.
Hugo-winning author Ken Liu explores what early cinema and Chinese poetry can teach us about AI's potential as a new artistic medium.
In a futuristic setting, a medical professional in scrubs interacts with a holographic heart and data display, showcasing their understanding of AI to enhance patient care.
By looking outside the current wave of hype, we can create a framework for weighing up the practical impact of AI on any business.
Diagram of the universe's expansion with grid patterns and cosmic elements, framed by "Consensus or Crisis?" in white text on black background. This visual encapsulates how cosmology changed from 2000 to 2025, highlighting key theories and discoveries.
25 years ago, our concordance picture of cosmology, also known as ΛCDM, came into focus. 25 years later, are we about to break that model?
planetary nebulae
In around 7 billion years, we expect the Sun to run out of fuel, dying in a planetary nebula/white dwarf combination. Is that for certain?
A glowing orange planet casts a shadow in space amid a backdrop of stars.
Exoplanets can exist anywhere around their parent stars, even so close that they evaporate or disintegrate. Even the rocky ones.
Two visualizations map the cosmos, displaying color-coded cosmic microwave background radiation. Blue and orange patches indicate temperature variations across a spherical and an oval projection.
It's difficult to project a sphere onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. All maps of the Earth have flaws; the same is true for the cosmos.
Abstract image featuring a luminous, symmetrical pattern of blue and white swirling lines against a dark background, resembling a cosmic or nebula-like formation.
A look inside Mindstate Design Labs' effort to design drugs that reliably produce specific states of mind.
Collage featuring a man with glasses, reminiscent of Seth Godin, on a black and yellow background. Overlaid with images of architecture and industrial elements, this piece is titled "The Night Crawler.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Two luminous circles connected by a glowing blue wave on a dark background, creating a sense of energy and motion.
22mins
"Quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement are becoming very real. We're beginning to be able to access this tremendously complicated configuration space to do useful things."
Two colorful spiral galaxies interacting in space, with bright centers and swirling arms of red, blue, and white hues, set against a backdrop of stars.
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists must have a cause, and the "first" cause must be God. Is that valid?
Graph titled "The Post-WWII Boom 1945-1970" shows intersecting curves labeled "The Old World Is Dying" and "The New One Struggles To Be Born," with "JFK Was Here" marked at 1960.
Americans have gone through three historic junctures like what we're witnessing today — and they happen on an uncanny 80-year cycle.
A digital, pixelated yellow face on a black background, giving the impression it's dissolving or glitching.
0m
"We're at a very critical point in human history where things are about to change dramatically. One of the beauties of these AI tools is you now can just be anything that you dreamt of being."
We understand many things about our Universe, and our home within it, extremely well. The number of stars in the Milky Way isn't among them.
Map highlighting an area in Europe, centered on the Netherlands and surrounding countries, with a red overlay labeled "PDF.
Common knowledge says the maximum size of a PDF is as big as 40% of Germany — but that’s a gross underestimate.
branching parallel universes
The Multiverse isn't just a staple of science fiction; there's real-life science behind it, too. Here are 10 facts to expand your mind.
Stylized illustration of a person holding a chess piece, with a digital glitch effect and horizontal lines creating a blue-toned, distorted appearance.
How the cult hit sci-fi show imagines a “techno-realist” future.
A retro computer displays a ghost on the screen as pixelated chains drift across the foreground, reminiscent of a scene from a Ken Liu short story. This digital haunt unfolds against a vivid orange background.
The first in a series of short stories by the Hugo- and Nebula-winning author that inspired the cult hit "Pantheon."
A colorful, spinning galaxy with a bright orange core, existing for 12 billion years, is surrounded by smaller galaxies and star clusters against a black space background.
Large, massive, rotating galaxies like the Milky Way are common today. So how could one form a mere ~2 billion years after the Big Bang?
A person in a suit sits on a chair against a cosmic background with galaxies and stars.
1hr 33mins
"Many astronomers are really driven by the search for Earth twins because I think deep down the natural endpoint of this whole goal of looking for planets is to answer the question, are we alone?"
Over a century after we first unlocked the secrets of the quantum universe, people find it more puzzling than ever. Can we make sense of it?